When I was conducting the interviews with Q’ero paqos back in 1996, they spoke about k’ara, which excited the anthropologists who were there. They had not heard this term before, and so they probed the Q’ero for more information. What we learned is that they make a distinction between two energies in a person’s or spirit being’s energy body: k’ara and sami. In this post, we take a deep dive into k’ara and its significance.

The distinction the Q’ero paqos made is that sami (the light living energy, the life-force energy) is the essence of a person, and k’ara is the visible manifestation of their sami and thus of their essence. For example, k’ara is what we see when we say that a sixth-level person literally glows. The Andean qanchispatañan is an upward progression of development of human consciousness. A sixth-level human being is one who is enlightened. The meaning of “enlightened” is two-fold: the quality of the person’s consciousness is such that they create no hucha (heavy energy) and the characteristic that identifies an enlightened person is that they visibly glow. With k’ara, we now have an explanation for that characteristic: the glow is the visible sami essence—the k’ara—of the person.

Not everything has k’ara. The paqos insisted that we “ordinary” people do not have k’ara. Of course we have a sami essence: we are light living energy and we all have an Inka Seed (which is our Spirit, a drop of God/the Mystery). But, according to these Q’ero paqos, we don’t have k’ara. Our essence not of sufficient quality or power to become visible. The extrapolation from this information is that we don’t have what is commonly called an aura. Some nature spirits do, as I will discuss below, but more of us do not.

Simply from this minimal amount of information, we can determine that k’ara can be thought of in two ways: 1) as the inherent high-quality power of a person and 2) as the visible manifestation of that quality and power. The paqos told us that as a power, k’ara can be invoked and utilized. Juan Pauqar Flores explained that a paqo or spirit being who has k’ara can share it with us. By using their k’ara, we can do things, such as heal. (To understand the following quotation, you need to know a bit about the paqo he uses as an example: don Andres Espinosa. He was deceased by the time of our interview, but had been one of the top Q’ero paqos. In fact, he was a rare kind of paqo—a chunpi paqo, which is a specialized kind of paqo known for having especially powerful healing skills.) Don Juan Pauqar Flores said, “The moon has k’ara. The apus have k’ara, and by calling the k’ara of an apu you can heal a person. Don Andres Espinosa healed diseases by invoking the k’ara of the apu. The apu has more k’ara than a paqo. My master, Andres Espinosa, healed by invoking the k’ara of the condor and the apu. But I do not believe that ordinary men have k’ara.” The other Q’ero paqos concurred: “Only great men [or women] have k’ara.”

The larger discussion was difficult to understand for many reasons, but don Juan Nuñez del Prado came to feel that an accurate interpretation of what the Q’ero were saying overall is that all beings have k’ara, but most of us have too much hucha (energetic heaviness) for that light to shine through our field and become visible. Great men [and women], however, are those who have mastered their personal energy and stepped up the qanchispatañan of conscious development. The quality of their essence is such that they have visible k’ara and can share their power with others.

According to the Q’ero, the same dynamic holds true for nature beings and spirit beings: some have k’ara and some do not. For example, although there was confusion and even disagreement among the Q’ero, the ultimate consensus was that only the lead condor, the condor apuchin, has k’ara, while the rest of the condors in the group do not. There was further disagreement about whether the k’ara of the condor apuchin glowed red or white (with white being the likely color). The k’ara as the visible energy of the apus comes in different colors, according to that apu’s “quality,” which we took to mean power. The highest quality energy is white, followed in descending order by red, yellow, and black. The k’ara of an apu alsorelates to its dominant capacity. One apu’s essence might be to confer healing, whereas a different apu’s specialty might be to help resolve family problems.

What I took all of this to mean for those of us practicing the tradition is that our ayni connection (reciprocal energy exchange) is not to a spirit being itself as an outer form but to its inherent power. That might seem obvious, but it is a good reminder, for I have seen plenty of students mistake form for function. As an example, we are not so much connecting to an apu itself as a mountain or whatever form it takes (not all apus are mountains). Our connection is to the apu’s quality and power: its k’ara is what we call to us and the apu shares with us. We invoke, receive, and use its k’ara, and when it shares that with us, we can do things we might not otherwise be able to do. We get beyond form to function. The apu (or whatever spirit we are connecting with) is first and foremost a source of power. To “carry the k’ara” of something, as the Q’ero paqos characterized this kind of ayni, means to be with it, to be connected with or resonating with it its essence, so that its power is accessible to us and can be used. Therefore, we can refine the two meanings of k’ara: it refers both to the quality of a human being’s or spirit being’s power and the availability of that power to be shared.

If that interpretation is even halfway correct, it has a few significant ramifications. One that I will call out here is that it means we should never hesitate to reinforce our own personal power with that of a more developed paqo or spirit being, both of whom presumably have k’ara. This view is supported by something don Juan Nuñez del Prado said once: if a paqo (an Andean or non-Andean who practices the tradition) has more power than us or even claims to have more power than us, we can take some of his or her sami to empower ourselves (if we feel we need empowerment). We don’t have to ask permission. That person is a source of power for others. But if a person is the same level as us or lower, no! We cannot partake of his or her power.

A final musing is about ayni dynamics. When we are in ayni with a paqo, nature being, or spirit being with k’ara, what is happening? From what the Q’ero paqos said, we are touching their core essence and they are sharing that essence (quality and power) with us. Is something different happening in our ayni with a being who does not have k’ara? My guess is that it is: we are simply sharing a resonant field we have set up between our poq’pos (energy bodies). Although we may not be accessing their essence directly, we can be empowered just by being resonant with their poq’po—with their karpay, which is the power they have available to share at the moment. Of course, this is all speculation. Yet perhaps these are musings that help us understand at a deeper level what we are doing as practitioners of “driving the kawsay” (the life-force energy) and being in ayni with human beings, and nature and other kinds of spirit beings. Q’ero paqos, and other paqos of the Andes, acquire knowledge and understanding through yachay—personal, firsthand experience. Maybe our knowing about k’ara can motivate us to refine our perceptual abilities so that we can begin to detect it and have our own firsthand experience of it. For, as don Juan says, don’t believe a word I say. That is willay, which is secondhand knowledge. Instead, we must find out for ourselves. We must practice and become the masters of ourselves through our own experiences. Then we can decide for ourselves how we can best honor the quality and level of power that is k’ara, and we can learn how to use it for what we most need or want to do when it is shared with us. And, of course, we might even realize, despite what the Q’ero paqos say, that we have k’ara ourselves.